2026 Watch

[TopClass]

Evening all.

Be good to see where the pecking order kicks off in the morning and whether it’s engine based or not.

Development will be absolutely imperative this season - whether a team can find a consistently upward development trajectory or whether they choose a limited path by mistake.

I expect Mercedes have a bit up their sleeve for tomorrow and will be the team to beat in the opening 4 rounds.

Ferrari looked quick in testing and I couldn’t help notice Haas being very smiley indeed- indicating the customers might know they’ve got a heck of a PU. Hamilton is also back to saving the world again in his interviews and he normally does this **** when he’s got a platform so maybe the are right in the mix. That said, I thought other cars looked like they handled better and so I think when Mercedes unleash the full power that they might have Ferrari covered, for now.

Red Bull Ford engine will be interesting to see when it all has to get turned up to quali and race ready. If they are competitive then that’s an unbelievable effort.

Gutted to see Honda back to their woes of 2015. Same story is playing out- the engine is shaking itself to **** and it’s limiting mileage. Just awful for Alonso, who deserves to fight for at least one more championship. One would think they should fix things faster this time but even then we are talking months. I believe FIA allow reliability upgrades this time for these regs where performance is >3% worse than the benchmark, unlike the pathetic token system of 2014 and 2015.

The Audi journey begins this weekend too- let’s see if they can steal a debut point which would be a heck of an effort- I think it would need to be on reliability though as opposed to outright pace, as the big 4, Alpine and Williams should all be solid to begin with.

 

[Sportista]

Evening all.

Be good to see where the pecking order kicks off in the morning and whether it’s engine based or not.

Development will be absolutely imperative this season - whether a team can find a consistently upward development trajectory or whether they choose a limited path by mistake.

I expect Mercedes have a bit up their sleeve for tomorrow and will be the team to beat in the opening 4 rounds.

Ferrari looked quick in testing and I couldn’t help notice Haas being very smiley indeed- indicating the customers might know they’ve got a heck of a PU. Hamilton is also back to saving the world again in his interviews and he normally does this **** when he’s got a platform so maybe the are right in the mix. That said, I thought other cars looked like they handled better and so I think when Mercedes unleash the full power that they might have Ferrari covered, for now.

Red Bull Ford engine will be interesting to see when it all has to get turned up to quali and race ready. If they are competitive then that’s an unbelievable effort.

Gutted to see Honda back to their woes of 2015. Same story is playing out- the engine is shaking itself to **** and it’s limiting mileage. Just awful for Alonso, who deserves to fight for at least one more championship. One would think they should fix things faster this time but even then we are talking months. I believe FIA allow reliability upgrades this time for these regs where performance is >3% worse than the benchmark, unlike the pathetic token system of 2014 and 2015.

The Audi journey begins this weekend too- let’s see if they can steal a debut point which would be a heck of an effort- I think it would need to be on reliability though as opposed to outright pace, as the big 4, Alpine and Williams should all be solid to begin with.

Good vibes, sadly I think you’re wrong on Williams, given how much they focussed on 2026 - if it wasn’t for Aston I think how badly their winter has gone would have been the major story of the off season.

 

[Number 1 Jasper]

Interesting.
I can see Strolls point though, getting Adrian and having to be a customer wouldn't be the best of plans. I wonder if it was an all in type thing?

Oh I can see his point . And I am pretty sure they ( not him alone ) decided to go down the customer route .

But did he / they understand that it appears it’s not just the engine ?

And , did Lawrence Stroll make the decision by himself ?

 

[Number 1 Jasper]

Good vibes, sadly I think you’re wrong on Williams, given how much they focussed on 2026 - if it wasn’t for Aston I think how badly their winter has gone would have been the major story of the off season.

I’m a Williams fan and I hope you’re wrong Sportista , but we will see , I HAVE to remain optimistic

 

[ched999uk]

OK so mega early days but Hadjar seems to be doing OK Red Bull PU doing well.
Ferrari looking good.
McLaren seem to have a couple of software gremlins.
Aston seem to have more problems than just vibrations.
Audi doing very well considering first PU.
Cadi down the bottom of the timing sheets but for first time having 2 cars on the track they have done very well.
Alpine not doing great considering then now have the Merc PU.
Haas looking good.

Looking like all cars will be within the 107% rule with the exception of Aston.

Off to bed now as have to work tomorrow.

 

[Sportista]

I’m a Williams fan and I hope you’re wrong Sportista , but we will see , I HAVE to remain optimistic

I’m not sure if I’m a fan of this iteration of Williams or not, but I’m certainly not against them and I am a Sainz fan, so I definitely want them to be doing well. To be clear I think they’re in for some short term pain, but that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong that’s going to hold them back for the whole year. My point was more, that they switched to 2026 so early and are meant to be on an upward trajectory to break out of the midfield (was probably not realistic this year), so relative to expectations they’re probably the biggest under-performers other than Aston.

 

[Sportista]

Oh I can see his point . And I am pretty sure they ( not him alone ) decided to go down the customer route .

But did he / they understand that it appears it’s not just the engine ?

And , did Lawrence Stroll make the decision by himself ?

Aston is spectacularly bad, but I think you can’t judge the project in these early phases. So many parts of it were late, that if they’d been 10th of the 11 teams it wouldn’t have been unsurprising. They’ve missed that bar because of the chronic unreliability, but that’s a Honda issue and they have a habit of getting F1 right, but only after a period of struggle, so we can believe that will come good. Works status, doing their own gearbox etc. gives Newey the freedom to work unconstrained, it’s fair to judge them once they’ve gone through that pain and we see if they’ve turned it into being a leading F1 team or if they are e.g. 5th and separated from the true championship contenders they’ve not really gained anything from all the expense and upheaval.

What I do think you can examine and point fingers at Stroll over are some elements of the strategy and risk management, e.g. if you’re building towards this year why not start doing your own gearbox 2 years ago and get some experience?

 

[Number 1 Jasper]

I’m not sure if I’m a fan of this iteration of Williams or not, but I’m certainly not against them and I am a Sainz fan, so I definitely want them to be doing well. To be clear I think they’re in for some short term pain, but that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong that’s going to hold them back for the whole year. My point was more, that they switched to 2026 so early and are meant to be on an upward trajectory to break out of the midfield (was probably not realistic this year), so relative to expectations they’re probably the biggest under-performers other than Aston.

Yes I agree , Vowles made quite a thing about how early they stopped developing last years car to develop on this years car .

I do remember though that vowles said they don’t really expect to be challenging for race wins until 2028 .

So as always we will see .

But Williams 1 & 2 in the WDC & 1 in the WCC in 2029

What I am pleased about is it would appear all this talk of being 20 - 40 Kilos overweight is nonsense .

 

[Julius Caesar]

Newey throwing Honda under the bus (In what must be a new all time record time for a partnership to collapse), but inadvertently showing how unserious Aston Martin is.

Fernando Alonso in 'hard mental place' because of Aston Martin's problems, says Adrian Newey

Aston Martin's dire start to the season has left Fernando Alonso in a "hard mental place", says team principal Adrian Newey.

www.bbc.co.uk

He's saying they only found out the staffing was going to be different from the Red Bull days after organising a trip to Japan in November.

That's two and half years after they signed the deal! Did nobody at Aston for that entire time think going to Japan or even picking up the phone to ask about the project might be a good idea?

 

[ched999uk]

Newey throwing Honda under the bus, but inadvertently showing how unserious Aston Martin is.

Fernando Alonso in 'hard mental place' because of Aston Martin's problems, says Adrian Newey

Aston Martin's dire start to the season has left Fernando Alonso in a "hard mental place", says team principal Adrian Newey.

www.bbc.co.uk

He's saying they only found out the staffing was going to be different from the Red Bull days after organising a trip to Japan in November.

That's two and half years after they signed the deal! Did nobody at Aston for that entire time think going to Japan or even picking up the phone to ask about the project might be a good idea?

That is shocking. I thought that a large proportion of the Honda F1 engine staff went to Red Bull when they decided to quit. I thought that was well publicised at the time?

If Stroll and Co only found that out in November then they seriously need a talking too as they should have been working with Honda way before that. Adrian was there in March, so surely he would have been working with them on architectural designs and making sure that they didn't make the same mistakes they made with McLaren?
Didn't Aston have a restructure, just checked and it was in late November!!!!!
From Aston "Andy Cowell will take on a new role as Chief Strategy Officer of the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team, using his unique experience to help optimise the technical partnership between the Team, Honda, Aramco and Valvoline."

So maybe this was after a visit to Honda? I'm surprised each didn't have at least 1 person at each others sites to liaise with each other.
Shocking.....

 

[Number 1 Jasper]

Newey throwing Honda under the bus (In what must be a new all time record time for a partnership to collapse), but inadvertently showing how unserious Aston Martin is.

Fernando Alonso in 'hard mental place' because of Aston Martin's problems, says Adrian Newey

Aston Martin's dire start to the season has left Fernando Alonso in a "hard mental place", says team principal Adrian Newey.

www.bbc.co.uk

He's saying they only found out the staffing was going to be different from the Red Bull days after organising a trip to Japan in November.

That's two and half years after they signed the deal! Did nobody at Aston for that entire time think going to Japan or even picking up the phone to ask about the project might be a good idea?

Yep , unreal !

 

[Sportista]

These are successful professionals, if it doesn’t pass the sniff test, it’s probably not entirely accurate.

I do think there’s room for some confusion here. E.g. After Honda pulled out but kept supplying RedBull I think there was a lot of crossover between the UK based bit of Honda and RBPT in maintaining that supply including people moving over. The R&D though was mostly in Japan and once they’d pulled out and the engine was largely frozen, I guess that’s the 70% who moved on to something else.

 

[Justjazz]

Honda are a car crash. Turning this around is going to take too much time. There is a commercial lesson here regarding the contractual penalty that ought but no doubt doesn't apply between Aston and Honda. .
That said, it surely is wrong for this issue to have surfaced only now. Switching back to Mercedes is presumably a problem of integration even if commercially viable.
F1 need to participate in helping manage through this problem.
Honda should be ashamed of themselves and need to find a solution fast.
A sad tragedy.
It has taken the shine off an F1 reset.

 

[TopClass]

Completely agree, both sides absolutely letting themselves down.

Honda to reduce the workforce by c.70% and not restore it even as recently as November 2025 is just absurd frankly, given the embarrassment they suffered in 2015.

But what kind of a mess are Aston internally if they haven’t had any clue about it? Who the hell is in charge? What has Mike Krack been doing all this time? Appears to have presided over some pretty poor years at Sauber and has managed to lead Aston to nowhere too.

Newey isn’t a TP yet finds himself there.

Andy Cowell leaving an continual restructuring suggests there’s still much to stabilise at Aston, even if/when they sort out power unit.

 

[TopClass]

Honda are a car crash. Turning this around is going to take too much time. There is a commercial lesson here regarding the contractual penalty that ought but no doubt doesn't apply between Aston and Honda. .
That said, it surely is wrong for this issue to have surfaced only now. Switching back to Mercedes is presumably a problem of integration even if commercially viable.
F1 need to participate in helping manage through this problem.
Honda should be ashamed of themselves and need to find a solution fast.
A sad tragedy.
It has taken the shine off an F1 reset.

On that note JJ, do you know what the rules are in terms of customer supply if indeed we end up with a Honda divorce?

Thought I recalled something about going to the supplier with the least customers but that might be a misunderstanding on my part in the old regs. McLaren Renault being the example.

Obviously now Audi would be lowest but are they even ready to supply customers at this point?

Would be keen to see a Newey car with a Merc engine! Don’t think Toto would be though haha

 

[Justjazz]

On that note JJ, do you know what the rules are in terms of customer supply if indeed we end up with a Honda divorce?

Thought I recalled something about going to the supplier with the least customers but that might be a misunderstanding on my part in the old regs. McLaren Renault being the example.

Obviously now Audi would be lowest but are they even ready to supply customers at this point?

Would be keen to see a Newey car with a Merc engine! Don’t think Toto would be though haha

Pretty sure there are no F1 rules preventing it but likely would require a lot of chassis redesign which might bust the budget. Obviously there maybe some contractual issues between Honda and Aston.
Newey must be fuming as must be everybody else. Must come down to how quickly can Honda solve the problem. If I was Newey I would look at the option of switching, if another supplier was willing but I do think integration this late must be a major challenge.
I hope Honda suffer commercially (brand damage) for this.

 

[Sportista]

I think it does fall to the supplier proving the least engines, but I think new PU suppliers get an exemption period, so if Honda were to pull out (pretty sure they won’t), then it would fall on Ferrari.

I heard that Stroll is funding a portion of the Honda programme, rather than it being a classic works deal/free supply. If true - depending on the exact nature of that arrangement, you might think worse of the level of oversight that seems to be have occurred so far?

 

[Sportista]

I’m not usually a fan of this website, but this does seem to be a better piece of journalism than they normally produce, doesn’t bode well if true though.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/how-close-is-ferrari-to-mercedes-we-dig-into-the-data-from-f1s-chinese-gp/10806041/

 

[ched999uk]

I’m not usually a fan of this website, but this does seem to be a better piece of journalism than they normally produce, doesn’t bode well if true though.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/how-close-is-ferrari-to-mercedes-we-dig-into-the-data-from-f1s-chinese-gp/10806041/

That does paint a bleak view of Ferrari!
Some of the comparative stats for previous years may be a bit misleading as we have only had 2 races to average the difference.
It's probably me wishful thinking that Merc will get more of a challenge as the season progresses.
That said I do wonder if Ferrari's lack of top speed on the straights is partly due to their small turbo?
For the start of completely new chassis and PU regs I feel that it's very early days but Merc do seem to have quite an advantage. That said, you only have to look at the Merc powered cars to see what a difference optomising recovery and deployment make!
I doubt McL would have messed their chassis up too much so when they are running they are slower due to lack of knowledge and experience of the Merc PU.

 

[Sportista]

That does paint a bleak view of Ferrari!
Some of the comparative stats for previous years may be a bit misleading as we have only had 2 races to average the difference.
It's probably me wishful thinking that Merc will get more of a challenge as the season progresses.
That said I do wonder if Ferrari's lack of top speed on the straights is partly due to their small turbo?
For the start of completely new chassis and PU regs I feel that it's very early days but Merc do seem to have quite an advantage. That said, you only have to look at the Merc powered cars to see what a difference optomising recovery and deployment make!
I doubt McL would have messed their chassis up too much so when they are running they are slower due to lack of knowledge and experience of the Merc PU.

It’s a good point about the averaging being over two races and maybe a bit misrepresentative, although when teams are pretty easily getting 1-2s, it is usually a sign of a healthy margin.

The one thing we have this year, which is new, is the ADUO powerpack upgrades. It seems likely that at least RedBull, Audi and Honda will get to make improvements that Merc can’t, which should help close the gap although I’d think that realistically the RedBull car is probably 6+ months behind on development too and likely they won’t close that down this year, so it seems a stretch that it will get them to a position to fight for wins.

It’s less clear to me if Ferrari will get an upgrade, because their powerpack seems to have strengths and weaknesses vs the Mercedes. I don’t think we know how the FIA will judge powerpack competitiveness - peak power or a more rounded metric? I wonder if the teams know? I said during testing that I thought the small turbo might be the wrong choice and that peak power would be key and I do think we begin to see why now, with super-clipping being key, 30bhp more, means approx 20kW more harvesting for the same top speed which gives you quite a bit of optimisation space for energy management, speed in boost mode, overtake availability/implications etc.

Ferrari I think will have it’s tracks, Monaco in particular, but Merc’s dominance in Aus I think is a bad sign because, it suggests the balance between them is pretty heavily tilted to most tracks favouring Merc. It may be as you say that if the Merc powerpack is the key thing this year, McLaren is the best hope to get on terms once they have a handle on how best to use it, it’s hard to imagine them getting on top of Merc though - so from a championship point of view, I suspect the best they can do is delay the inevitable.